What does ‘true personalisation’ mean in managed travel?

It is not about Amazon-style prediction or treating travellers as a statistical likelihood. It is about acting like a trusted one-to-one advisor – understanding this traveller, this trip, this corporate policy and this situation in real time. Done well, it feels like advocacy, not surveillance.

That is especially important during times of disruption. The experience becomes personal when the TMC can see the traveller profile, live trip context, policy position and urgency quickly enough to act before the traveller has to chase.

Businesses expect strategic service partners that can deliver responsiveness, consistency and traveller understanding at scale. Travellers still want high-touch service, but they increasingly expect low-friction interactions – proactive updates, fast answers and support across the channels they already use.

The challenge is that many travel teams are trying to deliver this while managing fragmented systems, disconnected workflows and growing pressure behind the scenes.

Technology alone does not create better customer experiences. Connecting the right traveller, booking and policy context to the point of service does.

So where does AI fit into this?

In practice, the most valuable AI is often the least glamorous. It is the AI that reads long email threads, identifies urgency, filters FYI messages, supports quality checks and routes enquiries to the right consultant, so people have more time for judgement, empathy and problem-solving.

For example, AI can automatically surface traveller preferences, policies, VIP status or urgency at the point of enquiry. It can help prioritise disruption-related cases faster, reduce manual triage and provide teams with a single view across channels.
AI should supercharge human capability by handling transactions and heavy administration, while consultants focus on advocacy, creativity and exception handling.

What are the biggest barriers preventing TMCs from delivering personalised experiences today?

It’s orchestration. Valuable traveller context is often split across booking tools, profiles, supplier systems and live trip data, forcing consultants to manually piece together information while handling growing enquiry volumes.

The goal is not necessarily Big Data. It is Right Data: booking data, profile data, policy context, VIP status, accessibility needs and live trip context.

The starting point is simple: map the data you already hold, where it sits and how quickly it reaches the people serving the traveller. Personalisation at scale does not begin with more technology. It begins with connecting the right data to the right decision at the right time.

Is personalisation becoming a competitive advantage for TMCs?

Absolutely. The winners will be the TMCs that orchestrate their existing technology stack more effectively, not those that simply add another tool. Whether the first touch is an AI agent or a human consultant, the experience needs to feel connected, policy-aware and personal. Business travel is still a people-driven industry. Technology should enhance those relationships, not replace them.

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